March 02, 2005
Game Theory
The University of Alberta has a group that's working on mathematically solving a host of popular games, such as checkers, chess, and poker. Some playable demos of their work are available, and they've consulted to a few big computer game companies.
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I really like their work on games like Amazons, etc. My husband is into game theory and after getting all this stuff explained to me (I'm a math doofus) it's really quite interesting seeing them essentially "break" or solve games. I also just happen to think game theory geeks are cool; some of my husband's classmates while he was in grad school would go to the casino to play blackjack and test out their theories. They were able to hit pretty much 50/50 odds all of the time, which was really neat.
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Thanks for an interesting post, jaypro22. So many links on the first page it will take me a long time to wade through it all. Hope this research leads to some more realistic solitaire games for computers. On the whole, can't imagine an online poker game being much fun, since much of real world poker is based on bluffing/human intangibles.
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a few years ago, i was disappointed to discover somebody had solved nine men's morris. (even worse, i'm not sure i understood what or how the guy's ultimate strategy is supposed to be implemented. iirc it was ~endgame.) anyway, it's no fun playing a game if you know the computer AI will inevitably kick your ass or, at least, force a draw. here's an online/java version, btw. the first couple of levels are easy/managable. even better: it has an "undo last move" button. :D